No MENA Political Integration without Democracy

Arab nationalism has its roots as an oppositional force to the colonial narrative, which used sub-national tribal, regional, religious, and ethnic identities to divide and conquer MENA resistance to colonial rule.  In order to bypass the conflicts of the sub-national identities, Arab nationalism adopted a secular narrative of an imagined and glorified past.  However, besides the unavoidable national and sub-national identities, a number of political barriers have worked against integrating the MENA region along a European Union model.  One barrier is the economic and political asymmetry of the region, with a few small oil-rich Gulf countries and many large resource-poor countries.  Besides this economic dualism, the economies of each group of countries are relatively similar, providing a limited incentive for economic integration and increased trade.

                However, the European Union was able to overcome economic and political asymmetries to create its supra-national governing structure, so this barrier is not sufficient to prevent MENA political integration.  Instead, the lack of democracy and diversity of state structures provides the crucial impediment to the creation of a supra-national MENA entity.  All EU countries are democracies, so the EU governing structure naturally adopted a democratic structure.  Since the MENA region has monarchical, authoritarian, and democratic state structures, agreeing on one political system for MENA supra-national will prove almost impossible.  How could a democratic entity like the EU exist in the MENA region when most of the individual member countries still lack basic democratic freedoms like freedom of speech?  A MENA equivalent of the EU will therefore not be possible until the region’s member countries become more democratic domestically.